Before we get started, lemme just say that I got a new tattoo last night and it’s quite fetching. Red circle with a star in the center on the inside left forearm. Even the artist dug it. My buddy Jake got an anchor on his bicep…little jealous, not gonna lie. Hurt like a mofo, though. Kids, don’t try this at home.OK, now that we got that out of the way, it’s time for a little more sharing: I love the scary. Horror movies. Haunted houses. Hell, I yelped like a girl at those Burger King commercials with the wooden-faced whatever-that-is. And to anyone who was sitting near me during Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake, I apologize. Welbutrin make me all better now.Honestly, I have willingly chosen to have the bejebus freaked out of me for like, the last 7 years, spending almost every night in October watching some scream gem or another (ask me about The Boogens, please!). So, in honor of my inner scaredy-cat and the glorious approach of my personal High Holy Day of Ha...
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Darren McGavin, a prolific actor who starred in five TV series, including Mike Hammer and the cult fave Kolchak: The Night Stalker, died Saturday of natural causes. He was 83. McGavin's many other memorable turns include the feature films A Christmas Story, The Man with the Golden Arm and The Natural, plus the TV bio Ike, in which he portrayed George Patton.
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We are in the thick of it now. While viewers at home get ready to watch Episode 3 of Night Stalker (tonight at 9 pm/ET, on ABC) — it's a very scary show, by the way — we are already editing shows that will air in November, filming ones that will air in December and writing shows that will be broadcast after that.
When production on a TV series begins, it's like an assembly line that can't stop. You have to keep feeding it new scripts every eight business days to make the air dates. That's a pretty tight schedule, of course, so you draw on as many talented people as you can to make it happen.
On Night Stalker, I'm blessed to have a lot of collaborators whose names you might recognize. There's Daniel Sackheim, of course, who directed the pilot and is an executive producer of the series. Dan worked with me, not onl
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Question: I don't know about you, but after watching the premiere of Night Stalker, I really miss Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland (not to mention Carol Lynley). The cast of the updated show is just so blah thus far. Stuart Townsend is miscast. (Bruce Campbell would have been a much better choice.)
Answer: "Blah" pretty much sums up my feelings about this unnecessary remake, which would be the low man on this season's sci-fi/horror totem pole if not for the unwatchable Surface. And you are so right that Bruce Campbell would have made a perfect Kolchak: appropriate in age, demeanor and, most important, humor ...
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I was watching last Thursday night, as I know a lot of you were. In what is arguably the toughest time slot in prime time, Night Stalker [airing at 9 pm/ET] had a strong premiere, drawing 7.1 million viewers and giving ABC its best numbers at that hour in more than five years. That, along with great reviews from some major newspapers like the New York Times and New York Post, made for a very encouraging start.
For me, it was also the climax to a long journey. If you read the article in TV Guide (and TVGuide.com) a few weeks back, you know that this project began for me in the summer of 2004, when Touchstone Television called to ask if I'd be interested in developing a new series based on the original The Night Stalker TV-movie from 1972.
To my mind, that was
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